An ultrasound diagnosis apparatus transmits ultrasound waves to a subject using an ultrasound probe, and receives waves reflected therefrom, thereby acquiring biometric information of the subject. The ultrasound diagnosis apparatus generates an ultrasound image that represents, for example, the tissue structure of the subject based on the biometric information.
The ultrasound diagnosis apparatus is provided with a circuit, the miniaturization of which has been being progressed. For example, some ultrasound diagnosis apparatuses are provided with a chip that contains both an analog circuit (e.g., analog-to-digital converter: ADC) for receiving input analog data and a digital circuit (e.g., demodulator) for receiving input digital data. In this case, the behavior of the digital circuit may affect the data in the analog circuit, resulting in occurrence of noise. This noise is sometimes generated periodically, and referred to as “fixed noise”.
In conventional technologies, to reduce such noise, received data obtained by transmitting and receiving ultrasound waves as described above and data simply received (noise data) are acquired frame by frame with respect to each scan line. Then, the noise data is subtracted from the received data to reduce the noise. In this case, data is received twice per one scan line. The time required for two times of receiving data twice is an obstacle to maintaining the frame rate. Accordingly, it is difficult to maintain the frame rate as well as reducing noise.